Archaeologists have discovered a group of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that were home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago.
A series of buried earth mounds and roads in Ecuador were first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain.
But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported the findings Thursday in the journal Science.
Recent mapping by laser sensor technology revealed the site to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roads, located in the forested foothills of the Andes, that spanned some 1,000 years.
“It’s a lost urban valley,” said Rostain, who directed the investigation at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s incredible.”
The settlement was occupied by the Upano people between around 500 BC and 300 to 600 AD – a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.
This LIDAR image provided by researchers in January 2024 shows a complex of rectangular platforms arranged around a low plain and distributed along an extensive excavated road at the Kunguints site, Upano Valley in Ecuador. AP
Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on over 6,000 mounds of earth are surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage channels.
The largest road is 33 feet wide and stretches for 6 to 12 miles.
Although it is difficult to estimate the population, the site was home to at least 10,000 inhabitants – and perhaps as many as 15,000 or 30,000 at its peak, said archaeologist Antoine Dorison, co-author of the study at the same French institute.
The cluster of cities lost in the Amazon rainforest was home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago. Stephen Rostain
That’s comparable to the estimated population of Roman-era London, then Britain’s largest city.
“This shows a very dense occupation and a very complicated society,” said University of Florida archaeologist Michael Heckenberger, who was not involved in the study. “For this region, it’s really in a class of its own in terms of its early stage.”
José Iriarte, a University of Exeter archaeologist, said it required an elaborate system of organized labor to build the roads and thousands of mounds of earth.
This LIDAR image, also provided by the researchers in January 2024, shows the main road crossing the urban area, creating an axis along the rectangular platform complex at the Copueno site, Upano Valley in Ecuador. AP
“The Incas and Mayans built with stone, but people in Amazonia usually don’t have stone to build with — they build with mud. It’s still a huge amount of labor,” said Iriarte, who had no role in the research.
The Amazon is often thought of as “a pristine wilderness with only small groups of people. But recent discoveries have shown us how complicated the past really was,” he said.
Scientists have also recently found evidence of complex rainforest societies that predated European contact elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Bolivia and in Brazil.
“There has always been an incredible diversity of people and settlements in the Amazon, not just one way of life,” Rostain said. “We’re just learning more about them.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
